FREEZE, HIRAM (1818-1884)
FREEZE, HIRAM, farmer and JP; b. Penobsquis, N.B., c1818, s/o Samuel Freeze and Bethia Wager; m. 1st, Margaret (Doak) Robinson, d/o Robert Doak and Jean Kirkland, and former wife of William Robinson, and 2nd, 1874, Nancy Ann Harris, d/o Peter Harris and Frances Mitchell, of Blissfield parish; d. Doaktown, 30 Jul 1884.
Hiram Freeze's paternal grandparents were natives of Yorkshire, England, who settled in Cumberland Co., N.S., in the early 1770s. Around 1801 most members of the family moved to Penobsquis, N.B. Freeze's father, who occupied a seat in the provincial House of Assembly for many years, was married three times and had twenty-one children who survived to adulthood.
Freeze had a farm at Doaktown and was the postal way office keeper and postmaster from 1854 to 1883. He was made a justice of the peace in 1855. His fine penmanship is found in the census returns for 1871, for which he was an enumerator. He and his first wife, Margaret (Doak) Robinson, a leading Baptist churchwoman, raised two children surnamed Robinson and three surnamed Freeze, including Samuel Freeze and Jane Freeze, the first wife of Richard Attridge. Freeze's second wife, Nancy A. Harris, died at Doaktown in 1905, at age sixty-five, leaving two daughters.
Sources
[m] (2nd) official records [d] Advocate 6 Aug 1884 / Advocate 19 Apr 1905; Freeze Genealogy; Gleaner 11 Aug 1855; MacKinnon; MacManus; Visitor 1 Jun 1871
Remarques
No record of Freeze's marriage to Margaret (Doak) Robinson has been found. It is recorded in the official marriage register and the newspapers of the day that Margaret (Doak) Robinson was married on 1 Oct 1842 to one John Wesley Robertson, in a ceremony performed by the Rev. John Turnbull, Presbyterian minister at Blackville. Nothing else is known about Robertson, or if the names of the parties to the marriage were correctly recorded. See note following Samuel Freeze.